Article published In:
Narrative Inquiry: Online-First ArticlesShifting discourses of togetherness and heroism in retold earthquake stories
This paper examines how disaster-related discourses are produced in storytelling, and whether and in what way these discourses may change in the second telling. We examine two sets of retold stories taken from a corpus of 123 retold stories about the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes in New Zealand. Findings indicate that these storytellers tell structurally similar stories, yet implement subtle linguistic changes which produce different positionings and discourses in the two tellings. We draw on positioning analysis and the ethnomethodological concept of tellability to show how, in the first telling, the storytellers orient to and produce discourses of united togetherness, whereas in the second telling they produce discourses of bravery and heroism. We argue that the positioning and discursive strategies used in disaster stories may change drastically over time, showing how retold stories of the same event change to meet the evolving realities of the teller and their post-disaster community.
Keywords: narrative, positioning, discourses, disaster, tellability
Article outline
- Introduction
- Narrative analysis of retold stories
- Narrative positioning analysis
- Tellability
- Data and methods
- Percy’s story: Helping an old couple
- Percy’s story – stanzas B and BB
- Percy’s story – stanzas C and CC
- Percy’s story – stanzas D and DD
- Percy’s story – stanzas E and EE
- Lucinda’s “helping others” story
- Lucinda’s story – stanzas A and AA
- Lucinda’s story – stanzas B and BB
- Lucinda’s story – stanzas C and CC
- Lucinda’s story – stanzas D and DD
- Discussion: Discursive (PL-3) shifts in Percy’s and Lucinda’s stories from QB1 (2012) to QB2 (2019)
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgments
-
References
References
Bamberg, M.
(1997) Positioning
between structure and performance. Journal of Narrative and Life
History,
7
(1–4), 335–342. 
(2008) Twice-told-tales:
Small story analysis and the process of identity formation. In T. Sugiman, K. J. Gergen, W. Wagner, & Y. Yamada (Eds.), Meaning
in action: Constructions, narratives, and
representations (pp. 183–204).
Chafe, W. L.
(1980) The
depoyment of consciousness in the production of narrative. In W. L. Chafe (Ed.), The
pear stories: Cognitive, cultural and linguistic aspects of narrative
production (pp. 9–50). Ablex Publishing.
(1998) Things
we can learn from repeated tellings of the same experience. Narrative
Inquiry,
8
(2), 269–285.
Davies, B., & Harré, R.
(1990) Positioning:
The discursive production of selves. Journal of the Theory of Social
Behaviour,
20
(1), 43–63.
De Fina, A., & Georgakopoulou, A.
(2012) Analyzing
narrative: Discourse and sociolinguistic perspectives. Cambridge University Press.
Foucault, M.
(1980) Power/knowledge:
Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977 (C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham, & K. Soper, Trans. C. Gordon Ed.). Pantheon Books.
Fromont, R., & Hay, J.
(2012) LaBB-CAT:
An Annotation Store. Paper presented at the Proceedings of Australasian
Language Technology Association Workshop, Dunedin.
Gee, J. P.
(2011) An
introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method (Third
ed.). Routledge.
Goffman, E.
(1986) Frame
analysis. Northeastern University Press.
Goodwin, C.
(2006) Interactive
footing. In E. Holt & R. Clift (Eds.), Reporting
talk: Reported speech in
interaction (pp. 16–46). Cambridge University Press.
Habermas, T., & Berger, N.
(2011) Retelling
everyday emotional events: Condensation, distancing, and closure. Cognition and
Emotion,
25
(2), 206–219.
Heritage, J.
(1984) Garfinkel
and ethnomethodology. Polity.
Holt, E.
(2009) Reported
speech. In S. D’hondt, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verscheuren (Eds.), The
pragmatics of
interaction (pp. 190–205). John Benjamins.
(2017) Indirect
reported speech in storytelling: Its position, design, and uses. Research on Language and
Social
Interaction,
50
(2), 171–187.
Korobov, N.
(2001) Reconciling
theory with method: From conversation analysis and critical discourse analysis to positioning
analysis. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social
Research,
2
(3).
Labov, W.
(1972) Language
in the inner city: Studies in the Black English vernacular. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Labov, W., & Waletzky, J.
(1967) Narrative
analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In J. Helm (Ed.), Proceedings
of the 1966 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological
Society (pp. 12–44): University of Washington Press.
Li, Y., Li, H., Decety, J., & Lee, K.
(2013) Experiencing
a natural disaster alters children’s altruistic giving. Psychological
Science,
24
(9), 1686–1695.
Local, J.
(1992) Continuing
and restarting. In P. Auer & A. Di Luzio (Eds.), The
contextualization of
language (pp. 273–296). John Benjamins.
Mandelbaum, J.
(2013) Storytelling
in conversation. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The
handbook of conversation
analysis (pp. 492–507). Wiley-Blackwell.
Matthewman, S., & Uekusa, S.
(2021) Theorizing
disaster communitas. Theory and
Society,
50
1, 965–984.
Mazeland, H.
(2007) Parenthetical
sequences. Journal of
Pragmatics,
39
(10), 1816–1869.
Michel, L. M.
(2007) Personal
responsibility and volunteering after a natural disaster: The case of Hurricane
Katrina. Sociological
Spectrum,
27
(6), 633–652.
Mishler, E. G.
(2004) Historians
of the self: Restorying lives, revising identities. Research in Human
Development,
1
(1&2), 101–121.
Norrick, N. R.
(1998) Retelling
stories in spontaneous conversation. Discourse
Processes,
25
(1), 75–97.
Passerini, E.
(2000) Disasters
as agents of social change in recovery and reconstruction. Natural Hazards
Review,
1
(2), 67–72.
Phan, T. Q., & Airoldi, E. M.
(2015) A
natural experiment of social network formation and dynamics. Proceedings of the National
Academy of
Sciences,
112
(21), 6595–6600.
Pomerantz, A.
(1986) Extreme
case formulations: A way of legitimizing claims. Human
Studies,
9
1, 219–229.
Potter, J., & Wetherell, M.
(1987) Discourse
and social psychology: Beyond attitudes and
behaviour. Sage.
Sacks, H.
(1995a) Lectures
on conversation, volume 1 (G. Jefferson Ed.). Blackwell (Original
work published in 1992).
(1995b) Lectures
on conversation, volume 2 (G. Jefferson Ed.). Blackwell (Original
work published in 1992).
Schiff, B., Skillingstead, H., Archibald, O., Arasim, A., & Peterson, J.
(2006) Consistency
and change in the repeated narratives of Holocaust survivors. Narrative
Inquiry,
16
(2), 349–377.
Schiffrin, D.
(2006) In
other words: Variation in reference and narrative. Cambridge University Press.
Tannen, D.
(2007) Talking
voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse (2
ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Uekusa, S., Matthewman, S., & Lorenz, D. F.
(2022) Conceptualising
disaster social capital: what it is, why it matters, and how it can be
enhanced. Disasters,
46
(1), 56–79.
Walker, G.
(2013) Phonetics
and prosody in conversation. In T. Stivers & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The
handbook of conversation
analysis (pp. 455–474). Wiley-Blackwell.
Walsh, L., Hay, J., Bent, D., King, J., & Millar, P.
(2013) The
UC QuakeBox Project: Creation of a community-focused research archive. New Zealand English
Journal,
27
1, 20–32.
Wang, L.
(2020) Using
tellability to analyze entrepreneurial narratives in the classroom. Narrative
Inquiry,
31
(2), 381–409.